


to sleep, perchance to dream

by wishingonalightningbolt



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Episode Related, Episode: s03e10 The Overlooked, F/M, Spoilers, Stiles Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-06
Updated: 2013-08-06
Packaged: 2017-12-22 14:31:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/914312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wishingonalightningbolt/pseuds/wishingonalightningbolt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Left alone after the events in Beacon Hills Memorial, Stiles can't stop thinking about the "what ifs" and the "next times".</p>
            </blockquote>





	to sleep, perchance to dream

It’s not like Stiles plans on it.  Between his fading crush on Lydia and his not-so-newfound interest in the suddenly-off-the-market Danny, he hadn’t really had time to think about potential love interests, especially since he was spending a lot of time trying not to die.  That’s important too.

When Cora Hale comes into his life, he doesn’t expect to have feelings for her.

It kind of grows just because of proximity.  He doesn’t want to see her get hurt anymore than he wants Allison or Lydia or Scott to be hurt—he cares about her because she’s a part of the pack, and he kind of has an emotion connection to people who, through no fault of their own, have fucked up lives.  So he sympathizes and he wants to help her in any way that he can.  The playful banter the masquerades itself as insults is just helping.

He doesn’t realize it until she gets herself in the hospital.  Everything is fucked, they have no place to turn, there’s no way they’re all going to come out of it alive but he can’t—he can’t think that way because his father’s life hangs in the balance just like Cora’s does and he can’t let anything get to him, has to be fearless and protective and strong even though all he wants to do is go back to when it was all easier.

He thinks of the kiss of life is kind of ironic.  He’s saving her life only to ensure that she sticks around long enough to die.  The thought makes him sick, that nothing he can do will save her but the fact that he has to try, he has to—

There aren’t any plans in his head, not really.  He doesn’t have a date on his calendar set for “the next time.”  He has no reason to think there even will be a next time that he puts his mouth on Cora’s.  Except for the fact that, now, he realizes, he wants to.  He wants there to be a next time and he wants Cora to kiss him back, he wants Cora to be alive and healthy, glowing with life rather than sweat under the sick lights of a hospital backup generator.

It’s nothing like the intense, deep (mostly platonic at this point) love he still has for Lydia, the knowledge that he would do anything to save Lydia’s life.  It’s nothing like the subtle attraction he has to Danny, the tiniest bit of jealousy that comes from seeing him with Ethan when he knows how dangerous it is.  Instead, it’s just…there.  It’s just a feeling in his chest that warms him, the accompanies the knowledge that Cora is important and she’s there and she can’t die, can’t be dead, because there are people who want and need her around and apparently Stiles is one of them.

He can sit back and imagine a time in the future, a time when none of this shit is happening, when Scott is back and safe and their parents are alive and with them, when the Alphas are gone or dead or whatever, when nothing is around that wants to kill them.  He can imagine, when he closes his eyes and clings to what he has left—which is nothing, by the way—that everything is back the way it should be the werewolves are safe, the people are safe, and they’re no longer some kind of fucked up Sunnydale, set on the earth purely for the purpose of some deity’s sadistic entertainment.  When he has the things and the people he loves back in his life, he can imagine there being a next time.  He can imagine Cora thanking him for saving her life, looking rather begrudging about the whole thing, and he can imagine kissing her for real that time.  He can imagine that it isn’t for any purpose other than desire, that there’s nothing he wants more in that moment than her, that there’s nothing more important, and that’s the kind of thing he has to think about in order to get to sleep.

There’s only one guest room in the Argent’s apartment and it is currently Isaac’s, since he lost both of his homes within the last few weeks, and so Stiles—Stiles, who has nothing and no one and is just waiting for his life to make since again, for his best friend and his father to be returned to him—is on the couch, praying that this time, just this one time, everyone makes it out alive.

Because maybe, if everyone survives, there will get to be a next time.

**Author's Note:**

> Saw the episode and immediately decided to write it. I have no excuses, it just kinda happened.


End file.
